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Motion Picture Soundtrack: “Free Bird”
There was an episode of television’s Friday Night Lights when a new character plays in his first game and forces a game-changing fumble. The lead-up sequence is unabashedly manipulative, as an unseen announcer criticizes
Read More »Motion Picture Soundtrack: “Louie Louie”
My ten-year college reunion is this weekend, and while fraternities didn’t exist at Harvey Mudd College, I did spend two years living in our campus’ closest approximation. North Dorm was a mostly male dormitory
Read More »Motion Picture Soundtrack: “I’ve Had Enough”
Teen angst is one of the most tempting lodes for an ore-seeking filmmaker to mine. It’s something of a shared experience; the instinct to rebel against authority in any form is a universal characteristic
Read More »Motion Picture Soundtrack: “Young Hearts Run Free”/”Kissing You”
The last time I took ecstasy was at a trance party near the beach just north of Durban, shortly after I’d finished reading Matt Ruff’s brilliant fantasy novel “Fool on the Hill.” It was
Read More »Motion Picture Soundtrack: “The End”
In my post about The Rules of Attraction a few weeks back, commenter Idp presented the idea that many of the heroes in action movies fall into a subclass of the alpha male as
Read More »Motion Picture Soundtrack: “All These Things That I’ve Done”
There’s a certain art to crafting a great movie trailer that is sort of a scale model of the art of crafting the advertised movie itself. Often a trailer contains dialogue that’s been edited
Read More »Motion Picture Soundtrack: “I’ll Fly Away”
Sometimes, when you’re choosing the soundtrack for an adapted screenplay, the source material hands your songs right to you (such as in the novels High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, and American Psycho by Bret
Read More »Motion Picture Soundtrack: “Momma Told Me Not to Come”/ “Spill the Wine”
The first time I ever visited Sherman Oaks and saw the childhood home of my old roommate Miles (this was back when we lived in San Diego, before he got famous), I mentioned to
Read More »Exit Music (For a Film): Leonard Cohen, “The Future”
Exit Music is a sister series to Motion Picture Soundtrack. Yeah, they’re both named after Radiohead songs. So what? You wanna fight about it? As long as you’re less than 5’2″, 120 lbs, and
Read More »Motion Picture Soundtrack: Elliott Smith, “Needle in the Hay”
To begin: Music has been a essential part of movies since the very first images were committed to celluloid — in fact, motion picture scores existed before spoken dialogue did — so it’s not
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